บททั้งหมดของ Luna’s Rebellion : บทที่ 121 - บทที่ 130

The Spire didn’t feel safe anymore. I’d never thought of it as a sanctuary—it had always been a place of edges and echoes, a prison for something too dangerous to be left unguarded. But now? Now the air itself felt like it had teeth. Seren was the first to move. She sheathed her sword with a sharp motion and strode toward the staircase. “We can’t stay here.” Cassian didn’t move. He was still kneeling beside me, his eyes locked on mine like he could see the tether inside me. “You’re not steady.” “I’m steady enough,” I lied. My legs still felt like they were made of glass, but if I stayed here, I’d shatter. He didn’t look convinced, but he helped me to my feet anyway. “If it can breach the ring once, it can do it again. We need distance between you and this place.” Seren’s boots clanged against the metal stairs. “Distance isn’t going to matter if the tether is the path.” She was right. I hated that she was right. As we descended, I kept one hand on the wall to steady myself. The

Dawn came too soon. I hadn’t slept—not really. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt it: the tether stretching out into the dark, taut as a drawn bowstring. Something moved along it, slow and deliberate, like a predator circling the edges of a cage. The knock on my door was soft but firm. “Time,” came Teren’s voice. I pulled on the plain gray robes they’d given me and stepped into the hall. A young mage—barely older than me, hair cropped short—waited there. He didn’t introduce himself, just gestured for me to follow. The corridors spiraled upward toward the Circle’s highest chamber. Everything here was too polished, too clean, like the kind of beauty that had been curated, not grown. The air smelled faintly of incense and something sharper—ozone, maybe. The chamber at the top was circular, the walls etched with wards so dense they looked like frost patterns on glass. Twelve mages stood in an outer ring, their hands already lifted. Cassian and Seren stood just beyond them, not part

The shield was still there when I woke—silent, invisible, but present. Like the weight of a dream you can’t remember but can’t shake. By midday, I knew I couldn’t leave it alone. If Teren thought this thing was his leash, then I needed to know exactly how to slip it. Cassian wasn’t thrilled with the idea. “You want to break the Circle’s magic? Inside their fortress?” “I want to understand it,” I corrected, pulling on my boots. “If that means breaking it… bonus.” He sighed like he’d been cast in the role of the reluctant voice of reason but had long since stopped believing I’d listen. “Where?” “Lower vault.” Cassian froze halfway into his coat. “You mean the restricted floor? The one with every detection ward known to mortal or immortal kind?” “Yes.” He muttered something under his breath that I pretended not to hear. The vault was three levels down, past two locked gates and a narrow stairwell carved directly into the rock. I didn’t need to pick the locks—the shield seemed t

They didn’t make me wait long. By the next evening, the Circle sent someone. I felt them before I saw them—pressure at the edge of my mind, like fingers testing the edges of a locked door. The shield responded instantly, flaring inside me like a wolf baring its teeth. Cassian caught the change in my expression. “They’re here.” I nodded, already moving toward the courtyard. The sky was bruised with twilight, the last rays of sun catching on the frost-laced stones. And in the center of it, a figure waited. Tall. Cloaked. Bareheaded, with hair the color of iron and eyes like molten glass. They smiled when they saw me. Not warm. Not friendly. A predator’s smile. “Elara,” they said, my name rolling off their tongue like a test they already knew I’d fail. “You’ve been… experimenting.” I didn’t answer. They stepped closer, and the pressure intensified—an invisible hand trying to slip inside my skin. The shield shuddered, but didn’t yield. “You’ve tampered with the binding,” they we

The fire burned long after they were gone. It wasn’t like normal fire. No crackle, no smoke, no smell. Just a ring of pure, silver-blue heat in the snow, so bright it made the shadows pull back. I didn’t want to touch it, but my eyes kept going to the center. It wasn’t empty. The ground inside the circle looked… wrong. Too dark, like the snow had melted straight through to a night sky that shouldn’t be there. It pulsed faintly, in rhythm with my heartbeat. “Elara!” Cassian’s voice tore me away from it. He was running toward me with three sentries at his back. His armor was dented, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. “You’re bleeding,” he said the moment he reached me. I looked down. My right hand was slick with silver light. Not blood—at least, not human blood. The shield’s light was leaking through my skin in thin streams, fading before it hit the snow. “I’m fine,” I lied. Cassian didn’t buy it. “You burned too much.” “They would’ve broken the wards if I hadn’t.”